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Grassland restoration on former croplands in Europe: an assessment of applicability of techniques and costs

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Abstract

Grasslands used to be vital landscape elements throughout Europe. Nowadays, the area of grasslands is dramatically reduced, especially in industrial countries. Grassland restoration is widely applied to increase the naturalness of the landscape and preserve biodiversity. We reviewed the most frequently used restoration techniques (spontaneous succession, sowing seed mixtures, transfer of plant material, topsoil removal and transfer) and techniques used to improve species richness (planting, grazing and mowing) to recover natural-like grasslands from ex-arable lands. We focus on the usefulness of methods in restoring biodiversity, their practical feasibility and costs. We conclude that the success of each technique depends on the site conditions, history, availability of propagules and/or donor sites, and on the budget and time available for restoration. Spontaneous succession can be an option for restoration when no rapid result is expected, and is likely to lead to the target in areas with high availability of propagules. Sowing low-diversity seed mixtures is recommended when we aim at to create basic grassland vegetation in large areas and/or in a short time. The compilation of high-diversity seed mixtures for large sites is rather difficult and expensive; thus, it may be applied rather on smaller areas. We recommend combining the two kinds of seed sowing methods by sowing low-diversity mixtures in a large area and high-diversity mixtures in small blocks to create species-rich source patches for the spontaneous colonization of nearby areas. When proper local hay sources are available, the restoration with plant material transfer can be a fast and effective method for restoration.

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Acknowledgments

We thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments improving the former draft of our paper. The authors are indebted to Tobias Donath, Ivana Jongepierová, Anita Kirmer, Agata Klimkowska, Jan Lepš, Mathias Harnisch, Norbert Hölzel, István Kapocsi, Anette Patzelt, Wim van der Putten, Richard Pywell for their help in sharing information on costs. We thank Gábor Takács for information on community translocation. This research was partly funded by an OTKA-Norway Financing Mechanism grant (OTKA NNF 78887) and by the TÁMOP 4.2.1./B-09/1/KONV-2010-0007 project. SL was supported by a Bolyai Research Fellowship from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences during manuscript preparation.

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  1. Department of Ecology, University of Debrecen, P. O. Box 71, 4010, Debrecen, Hungary

    Péter Török, Enikő Vida, Szabolcs Lengyel & Béla Tóthmérész

  2. Hortobágyi National Park Directorate, Debrecen, Hungary

    Balázs Deák

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  1. Péter Török
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  2. Enikő Vida
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Correspondence to Péter Török.

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Török, P., Vida, E., Deák, B. et al. Grassland restoration on former croplands in Europe: an assessment of applicability of techniques and costs. Biodivers Conserv 20, 2311–2332 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-011-9992-4

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